


Oversight

by Osiria_Rosebud



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Past Character Death, Yagami Light is Kira
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28827009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Osiria_Rosebud/pseuds/Osiria_Rosebud
Summary: Yagami Light found the Death Note, used it twice, and died—all in the same night.This does nothing to stop him from using the notebook as he planned.(On hold as of February 22, 2021)
Relationships: Ryuk & Yagami Light
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

“Well, you’re certainly not what I expected.”

It was the truth, and it was an understatement. When Ryuk tossed the spare Death Note into the human realm, he’d expected that a human would pick it up.

The figure in front of him might have been human at one point—might have been human when he found the Death Note—but he certainly wasn’t human anymore. He looked human enough while he was sitting underneath an apple tree with the notebook open in his hands, but there were some signs that revealed the figure’s true nature:

Hair that wasn’t ruffled by the night wind.

Eyes that didn’t need light to see.

A white kimono that wasn’t marred by the dirt and grass.

And, most notably, a suspicious lack of a name and lifespan.

The figure’s half-lidded stare was thoroughly unimpressed, and absolutely unsurprised. “Is that meant to be a compliment?”

“Eh, it is if you want it to be.” Ryuk stared down at the new owner of the Death Note. “Do you know why I’m here?”

Blinking slowly, pen still pressed against paper, the figure answered, “You are the original owner of the Death Note. A Shinigami.”

“You’re a clever one, aren’t you,” Ryuk said, and it would have been a compliment to a human. “I suppose you’ve had a lot of time on your hands recently, if you’ve reached that conclusion so quickly.”

A laugh—more of a scoff, really—and the figure’s eyes went back to the notebook. “All I have left now is free time, and I can’t do much besides write, research, and think.”

Ryuk’s eyes went to the place above the figure’s head; the place where he should have seen a name and a lifespan hovering over the new owner of the notebook. There was only one explanation for it.

“You’re actually quite busy for a dead person,” Ryuk commented. “Most people don’t do much after they pass.”

“Most people don’t have notebooks that can kill people,” the figure said with a shrug, as if it was somehow relevant. “I suppose I am the exception.”

That was something Ryuk could agree with, even if the figure had a different meaning in mind. “I have to say, I’ve never seen anyone write that many names in so short of a time. I dropped that notebook five days ago, and you’ve already filled up a few dozen pages.”

The figure grinned wryly and paused in his writing. “Nothing but time, remember? It hasn’t been difficult to write this much, now that I don’t have other responsibilities.”

“Still, most people are hesitant to use the Death Note after they learn it’s real,” Ryuk remarked. “You, on the other hand, have taken a liking to it.”

The figure’s grin warped into something more sinister—and that was compared to Ryuk’s own permanent toothy smile.

“I have to admit, I did not expect it to work with the criminal I tested this on,” the figure said nonchalantly, “but then once I realized what sort of power I’d gotten, what I could do with it… well, I made a plan.”

“A plan?” Ryuk echoed.

“A plan to cleanse this world. A plan to put humanity on the right path.”

Ryuk would never claim to care much about humanity or morals or righteousness, but he did care about his entertainment.

“… Go on…”

The reasoning was meaningless to Ryuk, but the result was more than he could have hoped for. Thousands of humans falling victim to heart attacks every day, all in the name of justice. The dead man believed himself to be a god enacting his divine retribution on humanity. It was almost laughable, how highly he thought of himself after just a few days with a Death Note.

And yet…

Ryuk knew that the new holder of the Death Note wasn’t anything comparable to an actual Shinigami, but at the same time he wasn’t a mere human. His lifespan had run out, and his soul was barred from the human afterlife as a result of using the Death Note. At the same time, he wouldn’t move on to the Shinigami realm like he would have if Ryuk had written his name. He would never age, never get tired, never need to eat or drink or do any number of mundane human activities. All he wanted to do was write names in the Death Note and reap as many criminals as possible.

And Ryuk, for all he had observed the human realm, couldn’t possibly guess what the outcome of this would be.

“Hyuk. What’s your name, kid?”

“Light,” the figure answered, filling in the literal blank that rested above his head, “Yagami Light.”

“Well, Yagami Light, it looks like we’ll be stuck with each other for a while.”


	2. Chapter 2

Days passed like molasses; painfully slow and containing no real substance. Even writing in the Death Note turned into a chore during the daytime. It was like a history exam at school where he had to make a list of important people from whatever time period they were studying that month.

Nights passed like thunder; loud and unnerving and all too quick. He hoarded as many names as he could to stretch out over the day, while simultaneously keeping tabs on the news to see if people were aware of the recent uptick in heart attacks.

In the handful of moments between night and day, he checked on his family.

Light was tethered to the apple tree between dawn and dusk, not able to stray more than a few meters from it while the sun was still visible. When night fell, he was free to roam to his heart’s content. He never left Tokyo, as he never saw a reason to; travelling seemed like a pointless waste of time when there was work to be done. But he could go back to his house, grab as many names as he could, and still have time to check on his family before the sun rose and he was pulled back to his resting place.

He couldn’t speak to them. He knew they couldn’t see him, or hear him for that matter. He hadn’t tried touching them yet, as he had no idea how he’d react to that failing like his attempt to talk to them. It was hard enough to try to speak with his family only for them to remain silent, but at least he could pretend that they were too preoccupied to hear him. He wasn’t sure that the illusion would extend if he tried to reach out and tap someone on the shoulder to get their attention.

But he could check on them, watch them move about the house, listen in on their discussions and the like. He could pretend that he was still alive for a few minutes every day.

He knew that he was dead, of course, but without moving on to a different realm for his afterlife, it was easy to ignore that small fact. He hadn’t figured out _why_ he hadn’t moved on yet, but beyond his basic curiosity, he wasn’t too eager to find out what caused him to remain on Earth. He’d tried questioning Ryuk, but the Shinigami remained unhelpful in that regard. Ryuk couldn’t—or rather, wouldn’t—offer any clear explanation as to why Light was still on Earth, but Light had some theories in mind based on the scraps of information that Ryuk had provided.

Using the Death Note meant that he needed to be killed by the god of death who dropped it. Ryuk, however, had been late on the draw, and someone else—a human—had gotten to him first. He was barred from both heaven and hell, if Ryuk was to be believed, and whatever afterlife he was meant to experience was now unavailable.

Not that he minded. He’d prefer to be alive, but he’d take what he could get.

There were some benefits to his incorporeal form. He didn’t need to use doors anymore, as he found that he could phase through them if he wanted to. His ability to interact with physical objects appeared to be related to his intent. If he chose to turn a doorknob and push the door open, then he’d be able to touch and turn the handle and exert force on the door. If he wanted to walk directly through a closed door, he’d encounter no resistance. The ability to usurp the basic laws of physics was intriguing, but Light hadn’t bothered with experimenting with that quirk too much over the last few days, so he wasn’t sure of the full extent of this ability. He didn’t see much of a point with testing out his powers right away. There was no deadline on when he had to have everything figured out—in fact, there was a good chance that he’d have years (if not decades, or centuries) to learn everything that he wanted—so he didn’t feel the need to try anything beyond the door trick.

(Besides, he had far more important work to do than messing around as a ghost.)

Another benefit was that Light no longer needed to attend school. He couldn’t actually attend school if he wanted to, as he still couldn’t leave his grave during the daytime, but it wasn’t a loss in his eyes. School had grown boring many years ago, and he’d only seen it as part of his path to getting into To-Oh and eventually joining the NPA. That was a goal he could no longer achieve, and so attending school became completely pointless rather than mostly pointless.

Light was, to some extent, annoyed that all of his efforts had essentially turned worthless overnight. All of the hours he’d spend studying for exams and attending cram school and completing assignments and participating in class was now just a waste of his time in retrospect. There had been so many things he wanted to do once he graduated. He'd given up a lot of things that he enjoyed in order to focus on maintaining his grades. He'd sacrificed tennis, most of his social life, and all of the opportunities to do something outside of school just so he could remain as the top student in his class. All of those sacrifices became pointless once he died. He would have been angrier about having wasted so much of his life over nothing if he didn't have the Death Note to distract him.

The Death Note.

His desire to join the NPA had come from wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps. His desire to score at the top of his class and eventually attend a high-ranking university had come from wanting to make his mother proud. Light had rarely wanted to do something just for himself, just because he wanted to do it.

The Death Note offered him a path that he wanted. It wasn’t entirely selfish—he’d already seen the start of the decline in Japan’s crime rate, and he knew that it would only continue to drop the longer that he worked—but it was the most selfish he’d been in years.

He had always wanted to make a difference in the world, and the method had fallen into his hands.

“Why aren’t you writing? Finally taking a break?”

With the method came the madness, in the form of one constantly hovering Shinigami. Ryuk wasn’t forthcoming with information on the Death Note, but he certainly enjoyed asking questions.

“You can read, can’t you?” Light said rather than answering. His attention was divided between two screens. He was using his computer to scroll through the newest messages on some forums. People had started to notice that criminals were dying from heart attacks at an unusually high rate. They didn’t all agree on who was behind it—some said the government, others said aliens, others said God—but they had given the mysterious force the name ‘Kira’, from the English word ‘killer’.

Light couldn’t say that he liked his new title, but he wasn’t in a position to choose one himself, so he had to let that matter go.

His old personal television sat on his desk next to his computer, with the volume turned on just low enough that it wouldn’t be heard from outside of his room. The late-evening news was playing, detailing events that were irrelevant to Light’s cause. He had it playing in the background just in case they mentioned the name of a criminal, but he hadn’t heard anything of interest for at least twenty minutes.

He really needed to start searching up names again. The world wasn’t going to do his work for him.

“And now we’re bringing you a live worldwide broadcast from Interpol’s ICPO.”

Or maybe it would.

The ICPO’s representative Lind L. Tailor—L, as he called himself—confirmed the whispered rumors that Light had overheard. He outright stated that Kira was a force that existed. He claimed that he was opposing Kira, going so far as to swearing that he’ll hunt Kira down himself.

As if he’d know where to start.

As if he was capable of achieving such a thing.

It was almost… quaint. This presentation was obviously meant to send him into a panic, and once upon a time, it might have worked. A single high school student against the entire ICPO was not a fair fight, even if the high school student had a supernatural killing power. Light was brilliant, but outsmarting the collective minds of every police agency on the planet would be a bit much for him. He could have done it, if he really put his mind to it, but the associated risks were astronomically high.

Capture. Public trial. Execution. All terribly high risks for a person that was alive.

But for a dead man? It was nothing.

“What you’re doing right now… is evil.”

Had he still been alive, still human, Light would have been offended by that remark. As it was, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

People around the world had begun to notice his work. It had started as whispers of coincidences, of conspiracies, of divine justice handed down from above. It had grown to a dull roar of background noise; ever-present but not loud. The ICPO’s message would change that for sure, even though that wasn’t their intention. All that this L had managed to achieve is bring Light’s work—Kira’s work—into the public eye.

So what if one detective thought that he was evil? So what if the entire ICPO thought that he needed to be brought down? So what if every police agency decided to work against him? They couldn’t do anything to him. They couldn’t lay a finger on him. In the meanwhile, support for Kira would only grow as the crime rate declined. The ICPO would have no choice but to concede when their investigation went nowhere.

Kira would win, eventually. All he needed to do was be patient, and continue to work.

“Heh. Are you going to kill him, too?”

Light rolled his eyes back to where Ryuk was hovering. While Light preferred to maintain some semblance of normality when it was not inconvenient—using chairs, walking up stairs and the like—the Shinigami had no qualms with laying on the ceiling.

“No. Not right now, at least.”

“And why’s that?”

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

This Lind L. Tailor—this L—would make for a great example of his power, but Light knew that such a death would be unnecessary at this point. He’d deal with the blasphemers eventually, but for now he needed to focus on clearing away those who were actual threats.

The ICPO and L would have been threats if he were still alive. But what could a bunch of ordinary humans do to him; a spirit, a ghost, a god of justice? They couldn’t kill him. They couldn’t lock him away. They couldn’t even see him.

This L had no idea what he was doing, or what he was up against.

“They can look all they want, but they’re not going to find me,” he stated calmly as the channel switched back to the regular reporter. “I’m beyond their reach. There is nothing that they can do to stop me.”

Ryuk didn’t respond. Light didn’t need a response.

The reporter cut to a segment about a recent robbery that took place at a medical office, complete with a picture of the main suspect and his name. Light opened up the Death Note and pressed his pen to the paper.

The ICPO announcement meant little to him, in the end, but he did not forget it.

Nor did he forget the name of the detective L.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed reading this!


	3. Chapter 3

“We’ve broadcast the ICPO message around the world, as you requested. It has been aired in every time zone, and in every country. We haven’t gotten a response.”

A pause followed, inviting an explanation that L did not have.

He’d been certain that the broadcast would provoke a reaction from this Kira. He’d been certain that Kira was in the Kanto region of Japan. He’d been certain that his stand-in would die of a heart attack during the first airing of the ICPO’s public acknowledgement of the serial killer, if not shortly after.

Where had he gone wrong?

“Sir?”

It was entirely possible that Kira missed the broadcast in his region. L had considered that possibility back when he sent in his request to have Lind L. Tailor pulled from death row. He’d assumed that Kira would be keeping a close eye on the news to see if the names and faces of new criminals were released to the public. That had been the trend for the past week; criminals around the world dying from mysterious heart attacks, but not if their identities were kept from the general public. If Kira needed personal information in order to kill, then it only made sense that he’d actively search for those details on his victims. In order to accomplish that, he would need to keep the news on whenever possible. The broadcast hadn’t been too long, but it had been shown on every channel at the same time, including ones that weren’t news channels. If Kira had been anywhere near a television, he would have seen it.

Yes, it was _possible_ that Kira had missed the broadcast, but it wasn’t _probable_.

“Sir?”

But if Kira had seen the broadcast and watched it all the way through, he would have heard all of the blatant warnings and insults that were crafted to provoke a reaction. How would he have been able to sit through it without killing Tailor? There was no doubt in L’s mind that Kira had an oversized ego along with a god complex. The insults, coupled with the threat of being discovered, _should_ have pushed Kira into revealing his location.

And yet, it had gone nowhere.

“L, what should we do next?”

On his computer screen, L could see the dozens of ICPO representatives waiting patiently for an answer. On their end, they’d only see the gothic stylized letter L that symbolized him. They couldn’t see him crouching down on the floor of a dark room. They couldn’t see him biting down on his thumbnail. They couldn’t see that he had failed horribly, for the first time that he could remember.

They just saw a letter on a screen.

“… It’s entirely possible that Kira missed the broadcast, and that’s why we didn’t get a response,” he admitted, taking comfort in the fact that the voice modifier would conceal any hesitation or irritation that slipped into his words. “However, it would be a waste of resources to attempt to do another live broadcast. The current trend of murders still indicates that Kira is working from Japan at this point in time. Have the major news networks replay the broadcast at least twice in the upcoming week. If Kira doesn’t retaliate by then, he won’t.”

“What do you mean ‘retaliate’?” one of the agents questioned. Apparently, not all of them had caught on to what the purpose of the broadcast had been. That was partially his own fault; L had been intentionally vague when giving the orders to set up the broadcast, and most of the ICPO agents hadn’t been aware of the contents of the message until it was aired. Most of them had been aware that the ICPO would be broadcasting a statement on the Kira case at that time, though, and if Kira were among the agents present on the other side of L’s screen, they surely would have tuned in for it. If they hadn’t reacted during the live broadcast, they wouldn’t react to any repeats.

It couldn’t hurt to answer the officer’s question. The odds of Kira being in that room were small enough to not make it a risk.

“The man who appeared on television—Lind L. Tailor—was a former inmate at a high security prison, who was scheduled for execution the day of the first broadcast. The script he was reading from was designed to provoke Kira into confirming his location. Tailor agreed to act as bait, so to speak, in exchange for his release if he was alive by the end of it.”

A beat passed, before the room erupted into chaos.

Apparently, most of the agents hadn’t realized what L’s intentions were before he spelled them out.

“Why didn’t you tell us before the broadcast?!”

“Live executions aren’t legal!”

“You made a deal to let a death row prisoner walk?”

L had had enough with the chaos after ten seconds.

“I understand that my decision was not the most ethical one. I made that decision, however, because catching Kira is more important than preserving my own conscious. My expectation was that Kira would kill Tailor shortly after the broadcast due to the narrow time frame. I chose Tailor specifically because his identity was not released to the public after his incarceration, so Kira would have no way of knowing that he was a criminal. Had he killed Tailor, I would have addressed him directly to reveal where he was and what I believe his limitations to be.”

“Limitations?” another officer prodded. L moved away from the microphone to sigh. He preferred having Watari relay information to the relevant parties for this reason; they always wanted to have things explained to them, rather than going through the effort of figuring it out for themselves.

“Every criminal that has died from a heart attack has had their name and face revealed to the public at some point. Criminals whose identities have been kept from the news have not been targeted by Kira as of this point, despite the severity of some of their crimes. From this information, we can reasonably assume that Kira needs both a person’s name and face in order to kill them.”

“So that’s why Tailor gave his full name during the broadcast?”

“Yes, and also why there was a name plate in front of him. Every part of the broadcast was designed to push Kira into killing Tailor. The threat of having me act against him should have made him panic, and calling him evil should have enraged him enough that he would attempt to murder Tailor.”

But it hadn’t.

“But it didn’t?”

Did no one at these meetings ever listen, or ever try to think? “As I said, the most likely explanation is that Kira simply did not see the broadcast. If you re-air it, we still could have a chance to locate Kira.”

“And if Kira doesn’t react to the reruns?”

L sat there in the dark, all-too aware of the time that was slipping away while he remained silent. With every passing second, his reputation with the ICPO dwindled, and yet he could not stomach the idea of telling them the truth.

“L?”

“I want to wait to see how Kira responds to the re-aired message before we make any further major decisions,” he said shortly. “In the mean time, I ask that you start collecting the times of death of all of Kira’s victims, and translate it into Japan’s time for comparison. We can start building a profile of Kira’s schedule using that information.”

A beat, and then another, and then another.

“Of course, sir. We’ll get on it right away.”

No enthusiasm. No respect. Not even an attempt to hide their hesitation.

They were starting to doubt him.

“See that you do. I expect a report the next time we meet.”

His right hand jabbed at the button to end the call. His left thumb pressed into the space between his two front teeth. If Watari was in the room, rather than at the ICPO meeting, he would have swatted at L’s hand to stop him from biting his nails. L usually stopped short of that point when he was just thinking over a case, but when he was stressed, he fell back into his old habit.

_Stressed_ was not the right word for what he felt, but it was the best word he could think of to describe it. _Anxious_ and _uncertain_ and _humiliated_ were too vulnerable. _Angry_ was too volatile. _Curious_ would have been the right word if he didn’t have his reputation on the line. He didn’t often get things wrong, after all, so encountering a stumbling block so soon into a case was a novel experience. It would have been a great time for some introspection, except the entire ICPO had their eyes on him for this case. They wanted answers as fast as possible, and they expected L to have them immediately.

And he _should_ have had the answers by now. He _should_ have been right. Kira _should_ have seen the broadcast, and he _should_ have killed Tailor as soon as the word evil passed the man’s lips.

Kira had positioned himself as a force of justice by exclusively killing criminals. The man had some moral compass—perhaps a very strong one, given how he was targeting the more violent criminals while leaving the petty ones alone for the time being—but he had no problem committing widespread murder. There was a disconnect between the way Kira viewed his own actions and the actions of others. He had, in some way, decided that he was justified in killing those criminals. Maybe he thought his own transgressions were excusable because he targeted the guilty and not the innocent, or his power lent him some form of a divine right to judge those that he killed. Either way, Kira obviously thought that he was doing the right thing.

It should have been a blow to his ego to be called out on international television as a murderer and not a hero. L had reasoned that Kira thought of himself as above the rest of the world, to the point of considering himself a god, and any insult equivalent to blasphemy in the oldest sense of the term; a crime worthy of punishment.

And there was only one punishment Kira was capable of giving.

Except… he hadn’t.

_Why?_

A sharp pain ran up through his hand a second before a metallic taste hit his tongue. L wrenched his hand away from his mouth. One shard of nail was missing at the corner, replaced by reddened skin and a rapidly-growing bead of blood. He swiped at his mouth with his other hand repeatedly in an attempt to remove the taste from his mouth. It did nothing to help.

Everything was going wrong, and the case had barely begun. The broadcast had been a complete loss. His standing with the ICPO was compromised. The profile he’d constructed of Kira was not sufficient enough to predict his actions. He was more confused than he’d ever been with a case before, and he didn’t particularly enjoy the feeling.

L needed to start rethinking his strategy. Kira wasn’t going to be an easy opponent to win against, but L _would_ win.

He refused to consider any other outcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L finally makes an appearance. I had a little bit of trouble writing from his perspective. It was a lot of fun, though.  
> This is spiraling into something far bigger than I intended it to be. Send help.


	4. Chapter 4

It didn’t take long for Light to get bored of the routine he’d crafted for himself.

There were only so many times that he could do the exact same thing every single day without finding it utterly dull. It happened with school, it happened with tennis, and it was happening with his work as Kira. He didn’t want to stop—not when he saw the steadily-dropping crime rate and knew that he was responsible for it—but he wanted more than an eternity of monotony.

There wasn't very much he could do for half of the day, though, so he had to get creative with what he had on hand.

He started testing the Death Note's limits. With so few rules known to him, and Ryuk unable (or refusing) to answer many of his questions, Light was forced to test the notebook’s powers without much knowledge of how his efforts would turn out. It was annoying to be left in the dark, but without any actual risk, he allowed himself to have a bit of fun with his experiments.

He started small. The rules of the Death Note stated that the cause of death had to be written within forty seconds of writing a person’s name, and that specific details needed to be added within the next six minutes and forty seconds; otherwise, the person would die of a heart attack forty seconds after their name was written. So, logically, if Light specified the cause of death was a heart attack, he should be able to add in some stipulations to the person’s death, such as the time that the death occurred. To test that theory, he set the time of death for ten criminals at midnight according to his clock, and waited for the autopsy reports to roll in.

It took one day to confirm that he could manipulate the time of a person’s death.

The next experiment was a bit trickier. Light suspected that, just like he could control the time of death, he could also could control a person’s actions prior to their death. Unlike his first experiment, where it would either succeed or fail, this experiment had a lot of variability involved. In order to test the notebook’s ability to manipulate people to the fullest extent, he needed to observe those that he was killing, rather than relying on the reports that he could access from his old computer. Thankfully, there was virtually nothing that could stop him from entering the prisons that housed the criminals he picked out for each experiment.

He made one criminal start a brawl thirty seconds before he dropped dead from a heart attack. He made another start composing a letter to his ex-girlfriend only to die after writing the last line. He even got another one to have a nervous breakdown and start to hallucinate. The most extreme case was having a man write a detailed suicide note, including a full recounting of the murders that originally landed the man in prison and a long-winded page about his overwhelming guilt and fear of being killed by Kira, all culminating in him hanging himself with his bedsheets that night.

Light was actually surprised that the last one worked. The man had previously maintained his innocence for years, despite the airtight evidence against him. The Death Note could, apparently, make people act in ways they normally wouldn’t, which was very useful information.

With every successful trial, there were two others that failed. Light expected many of them to be dead ends, but wrote them in just to be thorough. As expected, people could not escape from a Japanese prison and get to Paris to die in front of the Eiffel Tower in under two hours, nor could they draw the face of the next American president. Teleportation and prophecy were out of the realm of possibility, which narrowed the Death Note’s scope to things that could actually be done by humans.

One failed trial was actually a surprise; he’d tried to get a man to write a message saying that the detective L was hiding critical information from the ICPO. Light wondered if the test failed because it was a lie, or because the man couldn’t know that information. That led to an additional series of tests; one where he tried to get people to lie, and one where he tried to get people to say things that they couldn’t know. The result was, surprisingly, not split directly down the middle: criminals that had a history of lying or making up wild stories could relay facts that they had no knowledge of beforehand, and some of the meeker, quieter, or dumber ones could not lie about basic facts, such as the Earth being a trapezoid or Australia not existing. In general, though, Light could make criminals tell lies that were in line with how they’d normally act, but he could not force them to speak about topics they weren’t aware of if they weren’t the type to do that.

Light thought that the information might be useful one day, so he jotted that note down on the front cover of his notebook.

His most recent series of experiments required an element of patience. He wanted to know how long he’d be able to control a person before their death. He hoped that he had at least a week of extra time between writing a person’s name and their eventual demise, but he’d prefer to have more time than that; having a way to schedule criminal’s death weeks or months in advance could be useful. More importantly, being able to control a person’s actions for a significant amount of time prior to their death would be very useful.

The ICPO’s stance on Kira, along with L’s message, had been rebroadcast at least twice in the six days since it originally aired. All of the Kira forums had exploded overnight, more than tripling in the number of members in less than a week. Not everyone on them was pro-Kira—at least a tenth of the people on those message boards actively spoke against him—but he’d gained many supporters once more people were aware of his existence.

It was as he suspected; people would say that killing was always wrong and it should never be done, not even criminals, but once they saw the crime rate dropping and realized how much safer the world was getting, they’d rally around Kira’s cause. Some people would hold on to the ‘correct’ way of thinking for the sake of the moral high ground, but those people would gradually shrink in number until they were in the minority.

The perfect new world was an inevitability, and there was nothing standing in his way from making it a reality.

_“What you’re doing right now is evil.”_

Nothing, except for L and the police.

Light turned the television’s volume off. He’d memorized the entire speech already; he didn’t need to hear it again for the fourth time.

The police weren’t a threat to Light, but they were a threat to Kira. As long as the ICPO was standing against him rather than in favor of him, it would be that much harder to sway public opinion to his side. His followers were growing, sure, but they were just small clusters of people hiding behind their screens. They didn’t have the freedom to state their opinions outside of internet forums. They needed to hide their true thoughts in order to maintain their reputations. Until someone was brave enough to speak in favor of Kira publicly, his followers would remain behind pseudonyms.

Light understood their plight all-too well. He knew what it was like to need to craft a mask to remain accepted amongst his peers. It was an exhausting, draining, never-ending process that was as harmful to his psyche as it was necessary to preserve it. He’d never needed to hide anything as extreme as a belief in vigilante justice, but his anger and disdain for the state of the world was a close comparison. He never felt comfortable with speaking his mind freely unless an authority figure gave him permission.

The ICPO’s stance against him was the opposite of permission; it was an order to view Kira as a force of evil, regardless of his effect on the world. As long as they were hunting him down, Kira’s supporters would be suppressed.

So, how could he get the ICPO to change their stance?

Light had the time to wait for them to change their minds naturally, but the world did not. Innocent people were suffering, and the number of them only grew with every passing day. The world could not afford to wait until the ICPO came to their senses on their own terms. The police needed to be persuaded to let the Kira case go.

It was a nice idea, but it was easier said than done. Hundreds of officers, all representing different countries and different sets of values, would not uniformly respond to the same methods of persuasion. Light had the option of threatening them, but that could easily backfire; rather than being scared away, some of those officers would rally around the idea that they were fighting against a force of evil. He could also try having the ICPO pulled apart by manipulating the leading officers into backing off the case, but in order to do that, he’d need to kill the leading officers. As far as Light knew, those people were innocent—if somewhat misguided—and did not deserve to die just because they opposed him. He didn’t want to threaten or kill innocent people just to further his own goals.

Thankfully, he did not have to.

Over the week, Light had done some research on L when he had the free time. It had been hard working it in around his regular schedule of finding names to write and his additional experiments, but he’d managed to run a handful of searches on the detective to see what turned up.

L was the world’s foremost detective, according to all of the recent message boards that popped up over the last few days. Whenever the police ran into a case that was too complicated, they went to L, and they were lucky if they heard back; L only took on cases that interested him, and nothing else. His standards for ‘interesting’ were incredibly high, according to the people on the message boards, but he’d earned the respect of the international police agencies by having a perfect record for the number of cases he closed. The descriptions of L that Light found painted the detective as a highly-successful and somewhat-arrogant genius detective.

Light might have respected L if he’d known about the man prior to gaining the Death Note. L represented everything that Light had wanted; the ability to work on cases without going through the many layers of bureaucracy that made up the modern justice system would have been his dream job if he’d even considered the possibility as an option. Private detectives generally weren’t well-respected, and the stability of the career was suspect. He would have never been able to go into such a career without his family’s approval, and his parents never would have given it. All the same, it would have been nice to dream about.

Light wanted to respect L. The detective had done some great things over the course of his career. There were so many cases that would have gone unsolved if not for him. He had to be one of the most brilliant people on the planet. There weren’t many that could fill the space he’d leave behind.

Light wished that he could let L live, but he couldn’t.

The man had a high amount of influence over the ICPO with his reputation alone. He was the one leading the Kira investigation, so any opinion of his would trickle down the ranks. If he said that Kira needed to be stopped, the police would dedicate a significant portion of their resources to hunting Kira down. If he said that Kira was evil, the rest of the ICPO would echo that sentiment.

If he said that fighting against Kira was pointless…

Light did not want to kill the innocent men and women who were just doing their jobs. He had fewer qualms about killing L; the detective who could have stayed away from the case and devoted his energy to much better, much less futile causes. It was a shame that such a brilliant mind needed to be sacrificed for Light’s goals, but it was a small price to pay for a better world.

He didn’t sentence Tailor to die by a heart attack. He could, at the very least, give the detective a peaceful death in exchange for being his pawn. A drug overdose, comprised of over-the-counter painkillers and sleep aids, was not the most poetic of deaths, but it was the best one Light could give that could be interpreted as a suicide.

Light kept the note as simple and direct as he could. The Kira case was going nowhere. L had no idea where to begin the search. He’d seen the decline in the violent crime rate around the world and realized that the world would be safer with Kira than without him. He couldn’t stand the idea of ruining his perfect record, either due to the case’s difficulty or because of the moral dilemma it represented, and he only saw one scenario that kept his reputation in tact. He regretted ever taking on the case, and he’s sorry that his death would leave the Kira case without a leader, but really, the world would be better off if they stopped looking.

The full description took up an entire page of the Death Note. Light waited for the ink to dry before moving on to the next page, and continued to write the names of the various criminals he’d heard about over the news.

Tailor’s fate was sealed. All that was left to do was wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that happened.  
> I'm playing around with the Death Note's rules here. I don't know if Light's experimental results are entirely canon compliant, but it's more fun for me to stretch the rules than it is to follow them.  
> Hope you all have a good week!


	5. Chapter 5

“L, there’s something you need to see.”

The exhaustion that came with seventy-eight hours of wakefulness and six hours without something to eat fell away with that one sentence. Watari rarely contacted L directly outside of scheduled calls unless there was something important. Usually, the extent of their communication was a series of emails that contained attachment for the necessary reports and case files. There was never any urgency with those sorts of exchanges. Everything that got sent to him had been looked at by no less than a dozen other sets of eyes. The only reason to send him those reports and files was because no one else could find anything. It was up to L to sift through the mundane in order to find the pieces necessary to complete the case. Sometimes, though, something would happen that would turn a case around—a new victim, most often, or a confession or an obvious clue—and Watari would call L in order to get his immediate attention. After days of hearing nothing—nothing useful, anyway—L hoped that whatever Watari had found was beneficial for the case.

There were attachments to Watari’s latest email, which was sent five seconds before Watari called him. L opened the first one and froze.

Lind L. Tailor was dead, but not from a heart attack. The autopsy report confirmed that it was a drug overdose that had done the man in. Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, dimenhydrinate, and other various over-the-counter medications were found present in Tailor’s system in high enough concentrations to be lethal. Tailor—who’d just escaped the death sentence, who’d remained unharmed despite taunting a serial killer, who’d been so eager to do something other than rot in a cell that he agreed to everything that L had asked of him—had used his first week of freedom to commit suicide.

As callous as it was, L wasn’t entirely surprised. Tailor had been on death row for years awaiting his execution. The man had no family, or at least none close enough for him to remain in contact with. His name and face had been broadcast in every country; any chance at an anonymous life was gone when he claimed that he was L. Even with some added precautions—a fake name, a house in the middle of nowhere, a clean slate when it came to public records—there was no way that Tailor would have lived peacefully after he got his freedom. He’d willingly painted a target on his back, and there were plenty of people in the world—not just Kira—who would go after him for it.

Tailor wasn’t an idiot. He could have run the numbers, seen the writing on the wall, and decided to take his life before anyone else could. After waiting more than half of a decade for his execution, he might have welcomed the idea of dying on his own terms.

L knew, however, that Watari wouldn’t have called him over a conventional suicide—even if he had been waiting for news of Tailor’s death since the day of the ICPO broadcast. There had to be something else besides what was found in the autopsy.

The autopsy report was only half of what Watari had sent to him. The other half was Tailor’s suicide note. L switched the documents, and—

Well.

No wonder Watari had contacted him over this.

_“To the members of the ICPO,”_ the letter began, as if Tailor had any reason to speak to them, _“I’m terribly sorry to leave you with such a difficult task on your shoulders, but I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer lead the Kira investigation._

_“Kira’s methods are virtually untraceable. I have no idea where to begin looking. For the first time in my career, I’m completely baffled as to how to proceed, and I’m not sure that I want to try. This case may take years or even decades to solve. I don’t want to waste that much of my life on something so futile. My reputation wouldn’t survive it._

_“My decision to end my role in the investigation is not just about preserving my legacy. At first, I was willing to try to catch Kira because I believed it was the right thing to do. I was only thinking of the death toll when I decided to take on the case. The further I delved into the case, however, the more I regretted my choice to be involved with it. Since the beginning of December, the rate of violent crime has dropped significantly around the world. Petty crimes rates have taken a similar downturn. Despite what I thought when I first saw the number of criminals dying, the world has become a safer place since Kira appeared._

_“I can’t in good conscience attempt to catch Kira knowing that innocent people will ultimately pay the price, nor can I simply walk away from this case after making an international declaration to catch Kira. Again, I’m sorry to burden you in this way, but this was the only option that kept my conscience and my reputation in tact._

_“If you still have any respect for me after this, then please listen to me; attempting to catch Kira is a waste of resources. Attempting to go after him will only cause more needless suffering in a world that has too much already. Please, end this investigation while you still can. Don’t waste your lives chasing after a ghost.”_

The note was written in Tailor’s hand, but the words made it sound like it came from L’s perspective—a canny, inaccurate, visibly-flawed version of his perspective, with holes large enough to be seen from a mile away. L had made it crystal clear to the ICPO that Kira was most likely in Japan, that Kira needed to be caught no matter what, and that he’d work on the case with or without their support. Besides, all of them were aware that Tailor was just a stand-in. There was no way that they’d listen to the contents of Tailor’s last message.

But, to an outsider, it might have sounded plausible. L had never met a case that he couldn’t solve, and his reputation depended on that remaining true. He wasn’t sure how he would react to such a failure, especially for a case that had the whole world’s attention. He’d never given it much thought before. He didn’t really care to think about it at all; he had no intention of giving up on the Kira case, and he’d been very clear in expressing that to the ICPO.

If he hadn’t, though, the note would have a very different effect if it came to light. The ICPO was following his lead on the Kira case. They were all looking to him to see how to proceed with the investigation, and they showed surprisingly little resistance when L requested things of them (even if that little bit of resistance was more than L would have liked). Had they not known that Lind L. Tailor was a fake, and if he hadn’t made his thoughts on the Kira case clear, a large fraction of the ICPO would have been swayed by the plea. He estimated around a quarter of the officers working on the case would have bailed before he’d be able to do damage control; not a defeating blow, but a staggering one.

Tailor had nothing to gain from stopping the Kira case. There was no reason for him to write such a note, especially without a guarantee that it would be discovered and passed on to the right people. And—if he truly committed suicide—he would have known that the note would be a waste of his last words, because L was the one who’d let him go in the first place.

Someone who could have benefitted from the ICPO stopping the investigation, though… someone who would want L dead… someone who’d already proven that he could kill people without being present…

It had to have been Kira, and yet it couldn’t have been Kira; not according to the killer’s known method of operation. The autopsy clearly showed that Tailor died from a drug overdose and not a heart attack. His suicide note was unquestionably his own handwriting. Had the note not been there at all, L wouldn’t have felt so conflicted over his demise.

If Kira really did kill Tailor, and if he made the man write that note, then Kira’s power had a much larger scope than L had first assumed. L couldn’t fool himself into thinking that Tailor had come up with the note’s contents, but he wished that that was the case. It would be so much simpler, so much easier if the note could have been written by Tailor and he could just write the man’s death off as a suicide.

But he couldn’t. Not when Kira had just handed him a clue.

L took a deep breath. Watari was patiently waiting on the other end of the line for him to say something. He wasn’t an unintelligent man, but when it came to cases, he tended to remain on the sidelines instead of voicing his own thoughts. It was L’s job to put the pieces together, and it was Watari’s job to relay the information to the relevant authorities, but that didn’t mean they never strayed from their typical roles. Watari almost certainly had put some thought into the implications of Tailors death and his note, but he was waiting for L to make a decision.

L did not want to make a decision. Not yet.

“Have you shared this information with the ICPO?”

“No, I sent it to you immediately after I read the report.”

“How many others have seen this?”

“Just the officers that found the body, and the coroner.”

Perfect. “Good. Let’s keep it that way for now.”

A pause occurred on the other end of the line. L could picture Watari staring at the phone in disapproval, even though the man would never do so. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“For the time being, yes.” He wished that he had some candy at the moment, or even a bowl of sugar cubes; just something to chew on while he considered what to do. His thumb still smarted whenever he moved it, providing him a constant reminder as to why he should not resort to biting his nails. “I want to have some time to think about this… novel circumstance, and I’d rather not cause any panic unless it is completely necessary for the ICPO to know about this.”

Another pause followed. L had to wonder if Watari was attempting to goad him into saying more, or if he was just taking a minute to collect himself.

“Understood, L. I’ll wait for you to reach a decision on how you’ll present this to the ICPO.”

It was the latter. Watari’s voice sounded completely calm and genial, but L hadn’t missed the _how_ in the statement where there should have been an _if_. His opinion on how L should proceed was unquestionably clear for once; it was practically the closest that Watari had gotten to giving him a direct order in years.

L did not like it.

“It shouldn’t take me long, Watari,” he said half-heartedly. There was no voice scrambler to hide any of his slip-ups on the line, so Watari had to have heard the resignation in his voice. “One day, at the most. That’s all I need.”

L knew that he didn’t need to ask for permission to withhold information from the ICPO, and he knew that Watari would go along with whatever plan he eventually chose, but knowing something was true did not always translate to being able to act on said knowledge. He could know which of his suspects was guilty, but he would need to find sufficient evidence to prove it. He knew that Watari wouldn’t turn against him over a minor disagreement in values, but he did not want to take any action that would disappoint the man. Had it been anyone else, L would have shut down the argument, but he couldn’t stand up against Watari.

He couldn’t stand up against _Wammy_.

The call ended with a click. L was left staring at Tailor’s message—no, _Kira’s_ message—in a dark room, crouched in front of a computer screen with nothing to do but think.

He wanted to hold onto the clue for as long as possible, but Watari thought that course of action was unwise. L understood the reasoning that resulted in that opinion; generally, people didn’t enjoy being lied to, and most people saw withholding information as another form of lying. He could function without the ICPO, but their resources—provided willingly, at no cost to him—could not be overlooked. Solving the Kira case would be that much harder without having the help of the police. In order to keep the police firmly on his side, he needed to show a certain level of transparency when it came to the evidence that he collected. He knew that much.

But again, just because he knew it was true did not mean he wanted to go through with it.

L’s hand drifted upwards towards his mouth, stopping short of grazing his teeth. The skin around his thumb was red enough to be discernible even in the dim lighting from his monitor. Most of the inflammation had settled over the first few days, but the exposed nailbed was still raw and sore. It was enough to remind him to not bite down on his nails again, at least for the time being. The action of holding his thumb up to his mouth still provided some level of comfort, and it grounded him enough that he could think about how to proceed.

It was true that he would function much better with the ICPO’s resources than without, and in order to keep using those resources he needed to be on good terms with its members. The problem was that the investigation could be delayed if the ICPO did not react well to the new information. Kira could kill people with methods other than heart attacks, so some might argue that they needed to look into the deaths of all criminals rather than just those that died of heart attacks. That would be a pointless endeavor, but some may still argue for it. After all, what if Kira didn’t want to be associated with the deaths of certain criminals? Or what if he targeted people that hadn’t been convicted yet? The points in favor of that course of action would be enough to sway some people, and losing any resources—people, hours, or money—at the current stage of the investigation meant a drop in efficiency. A divided group was an ineffective group, and L had no use for an ineffective group.

The fact that Kira could control people posed some similar issues. L predicted that many agents would become paranoid at the revelation. Some would start looking into all previous deaths to see if Kira had left any other clues, which wasn’t an entirely ridiculous idea—Kira must have done some tests before he made Tailor write his own suicide note—but there were so many victims that it would take weeks to sort through them all, at which point there would be even more dead criminals to review. There was always the option of hiring additional consultants to do that work, but L had no way to stop the ICPO agents from trying to do it themselves.

And then there was the fear. Kira could kill people with just a name and face, and that was scary enough, but there was something different between a sudden, painful-but-short heart attack and everything else that Kira’s power implied. If Kira could make a man poison himself, then why not make another man shoot himself in the head? If Kira could force a man to write his own suicide note, then why not have another man release confidential information? There was no way for L to be certain just how far Kira’s powers extended, and thus everyone would have to assume the worst.

And there were a lot of ways to die that were worse than a heart attack.

What could he do? Either he tells the ICPO the truth and watches half of them flee in fear of their lives, or he keeps it to himself and watches half of them drop out when they find out the truth. Fallout was inevitable regardless of what he did. He just needed to pick which form of fallout was more acceptable.

He exhaled, letting the pressure that had built up in his lungs escape. He knew there was only one real choice going forwards. There was no way around it. Attempting to deceive the ICPO—partially or in full—would not only result in many agents quitting, but also another hit to his reputation when the deception was discovered. L was known for being the best detective, and as such he’d grown used to not needing to answer to anyone, but he couldn’t act as he normally would when there were so many eyes on him. The ICPO was looking to him for answers, and if he showed that he was not only unable to provide them, but also unwilling to do so, then there would be talk about how effective (or ineffective) the current arrangement was.

No. If L was going to work without the ICPO’s aid, then he’d rather dismiss them instead of the other way around. At least by telling them the truth, he was choosing to get rid of the more cowardly agents rather than accepting that the more prideful ones would walk later. His resources would shrink, but the ones he’d keep were of higher quality. He could still salvage his reputation by playing nice for a while. It wasn’t a complete loss.

L pressed the button to send the computer into sleep mode. He needed time to draft his speech to the ICPO, and he wouldn’t get that time if he was in front of a screen; he’d get distracted too easily. Plus, he needed something to eat, and he wouldn’t get anything by sitting in the dark. He could figure out what to say as he had breakfast.

He was pretty sure there was still some cake in the fridge. The extra energy would be useful in getting him out of his slump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's this week's chapter. I'm running out of pre-written chapters, so the next one might be a little late. Hopefully I can get some writing done this week.  
> If you see any spelling or grammar mistakes, please let me know.  
> Have a good week!


End file.
